February

Are you a startup? Want to grow your business through collaboration with researchers?
Join the startups-researchers matchmaking event in Salamanca, Spain on the 25th March! Find the talent and research results that will boost your project! This will take place during the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA) Annual Conference.

What?
The ePlus project is organizing a matchmaking event between European web entrepreneurs and researchers so that you both can explore collaboration possibilities. Moreover, you will be able to
reach out to the MCAA – Marie Curie Alumni Association (a European researchers organization) network through open access to their annual conference.

The pool of researchers at the event will be varied, some of them very keen on collaborating with startups, and it will be up to you both to discuss your own interests and needs and from there, if you
see a fit, discuss possibilities for collaborations. The outcome is up to you!

How?
Register your profile now in the ePlus platform to join the pool of startups open for collaboration with research community.

You will become eligible to participate in the on-site matchmaking (speed-dating) at the MCAA annual conference in Salamanca, thus ensuring that you both can get to know a different range of profiles,
with different interests and needs. You may also receive online matching suggestions for further collaborations.

Registered web entrepreneurs interested in attending the event on the 25th March may become eligible for financial support (for travel and accommodation in Salamanca, up to 500€). Yet, this
funding is limited, so register now and don’t waste this chance!

Under the frame of TechChill conference in Riga, SEUA16 Latvia has announced the six winners of their national StartUp Europe Awards 2016. The national Final Ceremony in Latvia, organised by the country manager “Latvian Association of Public Relations Professionals (LASAP)” has been last out of 13 events awarding best startups of 2016 in Europe which will now compete in the European Final in Brussels next spring.

National jury evaluated the performance of the previous year on the basis of the applications received, as well as in a wider context, on the basis of their expert-level knowledge of the Latvian startup industry as a whole.

Mrs IneseVaidere, MEP from Latvia and ambassador for StartUp Europe Awards, delivered the diplomas to the winning startups. The role of the ambassador in this competition is to support local startups and entrepreneurs. “Latvia is not a country with inexhaustible natural resources, but we are smart and educated people who are able to create products with high added value. Latvia clearly has the potential to become a centre in Europe, offering a stimulating and supportive environment in which businesses grow and thrive” – saidMrs IneseVaidere.

The winners of the SEUA16 from Latvia are:

In the Creative Category Mozello the world’s easiest to use website builder.

In the GREEN Category the winner is Conelum a biotechnological startup focused on development of rapid microbiological diagnostic tests for food and drink industry companies.

Anatomy Text is augmented reality, web based software for medical education and healthcare professionals, and the winner for HEALTH Category.

The winner in ICT Category is Notakey, a smartphone based solution for strong & smooth authentication and authorisation.

Finally, Rention a Property Management Platform that helps you overview and control all your estate from A to Z, is the winner in the Smart Cities Category.

“Latvian Association of Public Relations Professionals (LASAP)” decided award a special prize for achievements in public relations to 4SmartStreets.

SEUA also applauds efforts of media in supporting development of startup ecosystem in Latvia by awarding three media outlets – Labs of Latvia, LSM.lv and technology blog Kursors.lv who during the past year drawn particular attention to Latvian entrepreneurial activities by promoting creative tech ideas to broad Latvian audience.

SEUA has so far brought together more than 1,000 startup applications and 13 national awards ceremonies on the continent, with more than 80 startups awarded.Startup Europe Awards has been called The Eurovision of Startups, identifying the role models for startup ecosystems across the Europe.

StartUp Europe Awards, an initiative promoted by the European Commission, has the support of the President of the Committee of the Regions, several members of the European Parliament as ambassadors and is implemented by Finnova in collaboration with StartUp Europe.

So why focus on local regions? Regional diversity and local policy making still play a big role in shaping European startups. From helping entrepreneurs to incorporate a company, to providing grants or taxes breaks, European regions are key players. For this reason, Startup Europe Week events focus on showing entrepreneurs the support available to them in their local cities and regions.

Before the week started, hundreds of official leaflets and posters were designed by communications partner Hugin&Munin in Spain, printed and sent across +40 countries in Europe to each of the +280 co-organisers. Each city started preparing their spaces for their events:

#SEW17 was officially launched at 9am on 6th February in Brussels, at the Microsoft Innovation Center, with the participation of the Vice-President of the European Commission, Andrus Ansip. You can see the official #SEW17 storify for pictures and tweets.

Throughout the week #SEW17 saw a high level of diversity, with events spanning from introductory student workshops, to complex talks on robotics and AI. Each city organised events relevant to their local ecosystem, to show what support and resources were available in their local area. This year, the cities with the most events were London and Rome. If you would like to see some pictures, check out the official #SEW17 Facebook album!

Finally, the #SEW17hashtag achieved over 18 million impressions on twitter during the campaign, which shows the truly grass roots movement behind this initiative.

We created a visual story of what happened at the launch of #SEW17 in #Brussels last 6th February!

Startup Europe Week aims to help entrepreneurs and startups find out what support is available for them on a local, regional and European level.

The second ever Startup Europe Week (6th-10th February) was launched in Brussels on 6th February at the Microsoft Innovation Centre, with a host of brilliant speakers and people from the entrepreneur world.

Many of us have already been there. You are driving along linear roads or in the middle of the night and suddenly feel very tired. The most common solutions to tackle this problem is to drive carrying a talkative companion, listening to some loud music or, if the tiredness is prevailing, to stop somewhere safe and take a nap. These solutions could be soon out of fashion.

A startup from Portugal is now proposing a new technology to address this issue. Healthy Road is developing AI facial biometric tech for driver monitoring (DMS).

How does it work? The software’s main goal is to monitor the driver’s behavior and state in order to alert him in case of danger. The system can in fact recognize if the driver is able to take over the vehicle control after the autonomous driving mode and to alert the driver in case he is adopting a dangerous driving behavior. All in all, the Healthy Road technology provide a better user experience and support other sensors in the vehicle to take action if necessary.

The facial biometric software can process in fact in real time the stream from one single camera, in order to get facial features. Healthy Road aims to use this technology in vehicles in order to reduce accidents due to distraction and drowsiness.

The features of the software are already very promising and allow detecting different state of the driver. Using face movement detection and eye gaze, the software can detect a distraction or a loss of focus. Through eye analysis techniques, it is able to recognize drowsiness and using the blinking analysis the fatigue level of the driver. However, Healthy Road promises to do even more by recognizing emotions using face expression analysis and even stress through the measurement of the heart rate.

Healthy Road is one of the successful startup who took part to the 2nd Nitro Event in Sophia Antipolis (France) on the 1st and 2nd December 2016. The CEO and Co-Founder André Azevedo summarizes in this way the most recent achievement of his company: “We reached recently 90% accuracy in two main features – drowsiness and distraction detection – that allow us to open some closed doors and to have two new business deals for 2017”.

The startup has already received several recognitions and has additionally been chosen as one of the ten startups selected worldwide to the Rockstart’s Accelerator Program. By participating to Nitro they were looking for some focused advice to further growth their company and were eager to meet investors.

“Nitro meant for us two days to look at your startup results and find how you can improve them and plan the next step” – says the Co-Founder Azevedo.Having had the chance to meet several investors at Nitro, they understood one crucial thing: “Most investors are not interested to invest in product development,they want to invest their money on sales, so also the pitch deck should be changed accordingly”.

The whole day conference ‘Startup Europe After 2 Years’ #SEA2Y took place on the 2 February at the Permanent Representation of Spain in Brussels.

The event took off at 9.30am, moment in which Gerard De Graaf, head of Directorate F at DG CONNECT, greeted the startup initiatives and their achievements and welcomed the over 200 people who attended the event.

Straight after the brief presentation the audience was blown away by the incredible startup data collected by Dealroom, StartupHubs and Nesta, just to mention a few. Don’t you worry if you couldn’t make it to the event, we have all the slides on Startup Europe Slideshare! However, you’ll be missing the interventions provided by the excellent moderator Mike Butcher, ‘Editor at Large’ at TechCrunch.

The morning session finished with some short talks on the internationalization of Startups at the European level and was capped off with a showcase of the best policy practices to support startup ecosystems across Europe. The Startup Visa was one of the hottest topics mentioned, but we also looked at more grass-roots challenges, calling for an open culture.

Estonian #StartupVisa going live!

“We need an open culture to grow”

After a quick look at Startup Europe Awards – Best Public Administration – and the new initiatives that feed on Startup Europe e.i. the Startup and Scaleup Initiative, we all delved into an intense afternoon filled with the Startup Europe projects results and impact, summerised in short pitches which you can find on the Startup Europe slideshare and on our website.

Krisztina Toth presenting MyWay results and impact.

The 5-minute pitches were opened by a quick panel led by the Startup Europe team at the European Commission and its communication agency, Hugin&Munin, which is in charge of the website, The One Stop Shop and of bringing under one umbrella all the projects’ activities and events.

Once the results were shown, the Startup and Innovation team at the EC explained how to apply to the next ICT32 Open Call ‘Startup Europe and Innovation Radar’, which, by the way, there are about 2 months left to apply!

The event proved to be a great opportunity to connect with other important members of the entrepreneurship ecosystem. And hopefully great partnerships were formed to propose great projects for the ICT 32 call!

We are happy to announce the 10 startups selected by Startup Europe, in partnership with the Delegation of the European Union to the United States, to participate in SXSW. We believe that these companies have dedicated a lot of effort in building remarkable products and have a huge potential to benefit from this festival.

We would like to congratulate them for their amazing accomplishments and wish them a successful SXSW, and good luck with their growth!

The number of participants at this conference is phenomenal, and in the past editions companies like Twitter or Foursquare were launched. There is a lot of opportunity out there and we believe that the selected startups will make the most out of it.

From 223 applications received from all over Europe, we were impressed by the quality, impact and creativity of the European tech founders, besides their innovativeness and execution power. The selection followed the announced criteria: innovative technology; participation in an EU funded program; actively seeking to expand in the US; regional and gender diversity.

I’m a barrister, with my J.D. from University of Southern California, and a B.A. in political science from UCLA. I started addressing international law issues in several Latvian ministries (environment, foreign affairs) then moved to private law and then to the World Bank, the Council of Europe and finally the European Commission, working in areas of new technologies, policy and the law.

Is it a logical progression to what you do now?

Yes it is. The Digital Single Market and entrepreneurship in this area follow on my work on how policy and regulatory frameworks can adopt and adapt to innovative solutions rapidly while upholding principles of respect for the environment and our citizens’ interests.

Several important initiatives are implementing the European Commission Communication on the Startups and Scaleups Initiative (innovation procurement, regulatory sandboxes, Startup Europe and ICT standards), and Co-Chairing the European Commission’s Task Force on Financial Technology – FinTech.

What will you be talking about at RVS? / Why are you attending?

I’ll be talking about how Startup Europe aims at mission-based networking between Europe’s Startup ecosystems. We don’t have a single Silicon Valley dominating Europe but different cities that are strong in artificial intelligence, Deep Tech, gaming, FinTech, Insurtech etc. As policymakers, we also are conscious of needing to address societal challenges. The aim is to enable Europe’s entrepreneurs and tech to be part of the solution on the basis of an innovation and investment-friendly business climate.

How was 2016, what worked well, what didn’t move as quickly as you would have liked?

It was a great year for me because I moved to the Startups and Innovation dossier, which I am very motivated by, but it was a year in which we saw that many voters in the World were dissatisfied with the status quo and were looking for answers. I believe that innovation and entrepreneurship can provide some of the opportunities that have been missing so I’m glad to be working with Europe’s startup communities to ensure that the next scaleups come from the EU and that jobs and growth are generated.

Which influencers and websites do you follow to keep up to date with the latest developments?

Too many to make a choice here (and to show favouritism). Always glad to hear about new sources of info.

How can people find out more about what you are working on?

The Startup Europe websites and social media, the European Commission websites and social media and my own Twitter account ( @PZilgalvis ).

One year ago, a week’s worth of events was organised across Europe to bring together tech entrepreneurs with some of our many regions; with potential partners, collaborators and mentors.

It was called Startup Europe Week. It was the largest ever multi-event of its kind for startups, certainly in Europe.

Now, to build on last year’s pioneering success, we are doing it again.

Throughout this week across Europe, a wide range of events will take place in more than 40 countries to raise awareness about resources and opportunities that are available locally for tech entrepreneurs and to help startups to create new networks and ecosystems.

Five years ago, we were just scratching the surface regarding startups with the early awareness initiatives of Startup Europe.

This programme’s main objective is to strengthen the business environment for web and ICT entrepreneurs so that their ideas and business can start and grow.

Since then, we have expanded and diversified the list of campaigns and programmes held under the Startup Europe umbrella – like the many events, around 200 expected, being held during this week.

Deep tech is thriving, with investments and acquisitions going strong in this area.

European tech shows real diversity across industrial sectors, creating jobs faster than other industries. New tech hubs, where companies are succeeding in areas like fintech, healthcare, cybersecurity and the Internet of Things, are sprouting up to challenge more traditional centres like London and Berlin.

In short, Europe is home to a vibrant startup scene. And that is something we can really be proud of.

But we also know there is still more to do to help startups get off the ground and scale up.

Some familiar problems remain, such as linking up tech hubs, communities and ecosystems.

Networking them closer together would help to unlock their potential, and offer them some scale to compete in the international marketplace. This is exactly the kind of area where Startup Europe Week can help, especially with the local and regional support networks that it can provide.

We still need to encourage more women into tech and overcome what the Atomico/Slush report calls an “alarming gender imbalance”: 80% of companies that raise funding have all-male founding teams.

Gender imbalance (“State of European tech” report – Atomico/Slush)

The Digital Single Market strategy directly addresses many of the problems faced by startups. We are already making changes to remove regulatory and administrative barriers that are holding them back.

The aim is to help e-commerce startups by making it easier for them to comply with laws across the EU. In turn, they will be able to expand across national borders more quickly and offer their services to more customers.

Better public services – fully online and joined up across administrations and borders – will make life easier for startups keen to expand beyond national borders.

I want a “once-only principle” for businesses in their dealings with the public sector to be a reality soon; more e-procurement, and more procurement from startups – a great investment support.

Then, of course, there is financing. This is often – if not usually – the most tricky issue for startups, at whatever stage of the investment cycle, from seed money to late-stage funding.